


Pit Stop

by trajectory



Series: Repercussions [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M, Mild Humor, Post-Canon, background Blast Off/Onslaught
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19710724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trajectory/pseuds/trajectory
Summary: In the name of self-interest, Swindle attempts to head off trouble before it starts. Since the planet got eaten, Blurr is in the process of getting his business back together.





	Pit Stop

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the events of Escape Velocity, set shortly after the Combaticons arrive on New Cybertron. 
> 
> A thank you goes out to my beta reader for her help here! Along with the above tags, this story makes references to general Functionalist timeline awfulness, memory alterations, shadowplay, and a character (understandably) reacting very unhappily to past dubious consent to being in a relationship due to said shadowplay.

Blurr stopped dead in the middle of wiping off the dusty bar counter with a rag.

”I must have misheard you,” Blurr said. “There is absolutely no way I heard that right. None. Nuh-huh. Zilch.”

After surveying the extent of damage to this duplicate Maccadam’s and deciding their meager two-mech cleaning efforts could only go so far, Swindle had hauled a chair over from its table to the rusted-up bar where they were currently taking a break. He crossed his legs at the wheels and said, “Pretty sure I didn’t stutter.”

Blurr balanced on his crutches as he leaned against the same side of the bar as Swindle, dented and wadded with nanite patches. The fresh shine of weld lines wound down his torso and hips. One of his legs was gone from the knee-joint down, dangling wires capped off with a metal cover.

Ratchet had patched Blurr up as best a currently overworked medic could, but for now, since none of his injuries received during the rush of the planetary evacuations had been life-threatening, Blurr was low on the triage levels. His leg could be replaced and the finer connections of circuitry re-wired, Ratchet had reassured him, but he needed to wait his turn. There were only so many functional CR tubes in the city to go around—with New Iacon’s center packed, they were ferrying many of the casualties to the other cities’ medical centers—and Blurr, still possessing those Autobot sensibilities despite not wearing the brand anymore, wasn’t willing to take up space a victim in more critical condition might need.

“You’re proposing—you want _me_ to hire your gestalt? A group with the likes of _Vortex_ in its ranks?” Blurr wagged the tip of a crutch in his direction. “Are you serious? Listen to yourself. Sure, I did just say having security around would be nice, Primus, but forget protecting the bar, I’d be more worried about protecting my customers with _him_ lurking around!”

“The thing is, yeah. I’m serious,” Swindle replied.

Blue optics blinked at him.

Blurr dropped himself (awkwardly, not gracefully; there was a wobble to it. Blurr wasn’t accustomed to hobbling around on one leg) down on a seat close to Swindle, tossing the rag to the side and tap-tap-tapping a finger rapidfire on the bar counter. Swindle knew being unable to run meant Blurr was fidgety, itching to burn off energy. _Tap, tap, taptaptap_. “Okay.” He vented out nice and steady, slowed his words down. _Taptap_. “Okay then. Convince me why this would work out. I’m seeing dozens of ways it could go south, and I’ll have you know Vortex only features in _half_ of them.”

Swindle shrugged. “Think about it. You can call him a _lot_ of other things, and plenty of them would be right on the mark, but Onslaught’s a professional at spark. He can keep Brawl and Vortex on a leash if you make it worth his while, and Blast Off—” Swindle paused, face souring for an instance and his field barely concealing the twing of displeasure. His face smoothed back over. “Blast Off ain’t gonna cause trouble.”

Blast Off wouldn’t dare, not when even his own gestalt held him in disgrace. He wouldn’t risk anything that might stink of him stepping out of the boundaries of his probation, not if that could result in a full-blown rejection by them. Swindle was increasingly doubtful Blast Off was going to ever cause trouble for anybody ever again. All the shuttle seemed to muster up the will to do was listlessly trail after the nearest Combaticon in silence.

Something had broken deep inside him.

Given Blast Off, with sufficient motivation, had royally screwed up and gotten Swindle’s memories sliced out and replaced by that thieving spider, Swindle wasn’t feeling all that charitable towards his gestalt-mate right at the moment—and therefore the con-mech felt little urge to immediately intervene _there_.

Wiping the resentful thought away without sharing it like a clod of mud stuck to his tires, Swindle flashed Blurr a smile, and a nudge with his electromagnetics. “And anyways! This way, you don’t have to waste any time vetting their backgrounds! You already know all the big details. I can vouch for that. And them. It’ll save you from having to double-check.”

“Pretty dirty details,” Blurr remarked without accusation in his tone and pressed back with a congenial flick of his own field, the beat of his finger-tapping halted in favor of drawing circles on a stain left by an energon spill on the bar with one slim digit.

“We’ve got a real dirty past,” Swindle agreed cheerfully without missing a beat. “But at this point, who doesn’t? At least there wouldn’t be any nasty surprises sprung on you. You’ll know what you’re getting upfront.”

Blurr hmphed, “You’ve got a point.”

“But… ?” Swindle prompted him, sensing he was still thinking something over.

Blurr frowned. “Swindle. This is all well and good. But that’s obviously not the only reason you’re asking this from me.”

Swindle’s grin vanished.

“Blurr,” Swindle was abruptly serious. He leaned forward, wanting to be clear with his partner. “I need Onslaught distracted or I’m worried he’s going to do something stupidly drastic.”

Like try and take out the new government in an attempt to vehemently avoid dealing with his personal issues, but Blurr didn’t need to know _that_. Hopefully Blurr would assume Onslaught, left with too much free time on his hands, and an equally bored Vortex and Brawl, would go for something more small-scale—like trying to kill Autobots or use Bruticus to stomp some districts flat or whatever.

Everybody knew the Combaticons could combine. That was no secret. (And nobody else knew of the personal… issue that could be blocking a combination.) Swindle wished his life wasn’t in a state where he had to legitimately worry about how the fallout from his team leader’s break up was going to impact him, but wishes didn’t pay the slagging bills.

Swindle said, “As a favor to me, could you just hire them?”

The Combaticons were camping out in a sector of temporary public housing, jammed in with hundreds of other homeless mechs. (The reasons for said homelessness varied: Unicron, Functionists being slagholes, obsolescence, or the reality that living on a planet that kept transforming back and forth from planet to a mobile robot-fortress and back again for years on end meant no small number of Cybertronian structures got crushed or collapsed from the tremodeous landquakes.)

Vortex was faking alarmingly cheerful in a way that promised future bloodshed. Brawl had started eyeing the nearest smaller mechs that walked past the front door with the familiar air of a frustrated bruiser hoping for something to pummel so he could vent. And Onslaught and Blast Off were very, very busy devoting all their energy to pretending the other didn’t exist, when Onslaught wasn’t in the mood for verbally tearing into Blast Off while Blast Off quailed before rage hot enough to scorch his paint and took it without retaliation.

They were home, the combiner programming entrenched in his spark insisted loudly, but home wasn’t a happy place right now.

Swindle’s gestalt was a wreck.

But he was bound to them and them to him.

So frag it. He hadn’t asked for this but he had to make it work. _They_ had to make it work. That meant being proactive.

Swindle wasn’t going to test how far Onslaught was willing to let him wander without trying to reel him back in. Turned out that installing gestalt core coding into Onslaught had the side-effect of making the mech’s already decidedly obnoxious possessive streak skyrocket, made worse by his paranoia being proven well-founded recently.

(Thanks, _Starscream_. Thanks, Airachnid. Now Swindle was the one stuck with the rubble left from what they’d done, and honestly, Swindle wagered if one was a bot who cared about karma, the amount he’d probably racked up was pretty impressive, but _surely_ he hadn’t done anything bad enough to deserve _this_ scrap. Barring that one time on Hedonia with the Catharsians. Or that other incident involving critical mass weaponry, Autobot-supporters with a grudge, getting counterfeit credits past the banking systems of six separate galactic sectors, and a truly unfortunate misunderstanding from a group of once-valued customers of how down payments worked and the consequences of not paying up on time.)

Swindle did _not_ need Onslaught venting down his damn neck whenever he strayed away from the group too long. If he couldn’t move away from them, not truly, he’d just move them closer to him.

And having a job would take Onslaught’s mind off Blast Off.

Blurr rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He stood up and clattered about in the bar’s space. “You want him kept busy?”

“Busy, distracted, take your pick.” Swindle said, putting his elbows on the bar and comfortably watching Blurr bang around.

They hadn’t turned up much in their searching—a few bottles of engex, one cracked open and curdled, the other whole. They’d popped the lid off and drank it down on the spot. It was obvious the dilapidated bar had been raided before. The empty shelves and the broken containers were just further proof. The stage had been removed by one of the old owners that one of the natives in the neighborhood had mentioned. By the order of the regime, they had grimaced. That explained the peeling government propaganda posters plastered onto the walls. Blurr had looked fit to start frothing at the mouth at the sight of them. They’d need to be stripped off.

However, personally, Swindle approved of the crude graffiti that looked like a cog-headed Councillor getting chomped in half by a mech in a beast alt mode scrawled in bright red across a poster that declared **TAKE PRIDE IN BEING A MEANS TO AN END**. The artist even had included a witty edit: ‘ _take pride in being our food you skidplate_.’

Blurr’s favorite graffiti, despite his difficulty in picking just one, had been the simpler but blunt ‘ _ALL FUNCTIONISTS CAN GET FRAGGED_ ’ repeatedly written over a poster so densely Swindle and Blurr couldn’t pick out the original slogan under all the pink.

The distillery hooked up to the bar, eight large cylinders lined up on the wall, was empty. Twisting the faucets on the taps to a chorus of accompanying squeaks didn’t coax out a drop. They would need to fix that, buy up some energon stores to filter into the kind of high grade that sold like oil cakes before Blurr could re-open Maccadams’ with a winning flair. Replacement cubes and canisters too—the windows needed repairs, and some remodelling to touch the business up and make it match Blurrs’ old Maccadam’s more wouldn’t hurt too.

Swindle had a few contacts in mind that he could put in a word with to help with that. Eh. If Unicron hadn’t killed them, that was.

“Busy, huh?” Blurr’s air filtration vents flipped open and shut. He came back to where Swindle was sitting, picked up his rag and started turning it over in his hands. “... Being legally employed might keep the Combaticons from causing problems for awhile. We have enough trouble to deal with already.”

“I can help with negotiating a contract too. I know how Onslaught likes to drive a bargain,” Swindle offered.

“... And it would be easier on you to have your gestalt around and close by, wouldn’t it?” Blurr said.

“Yeah.”

Outside Maccadams’ windows, one could see Cybertronians walking past. The call had already gone out for any mechs willing to get their feet on the ground, fixing roads and rebuilding bridges so supplies, information, and the wounded could move freely again. The world was reaching for a future worth living, as best it could with what was left. A world the Combaticons could be a part of. Swindle was a fan of seizing those kind of opportunities for himself.

“Fine,” Blurr said.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” Swindle checked.

“If you can convince him to come in, I’m agreeing to a job _interview_ ,” Blurr said. He tapped a crutch on the floor, engine idly rumbling. “It’s a ‘yes’ to that. As a favor to you. If it goes okay, then we’ll talk contracts. I’m not making any promises if I’m not sure I can keep them.”

Swindle beamed up at him. His electromagnetic field rose up with his mood. “Sweet. You know me, Blurr. I can do that. This doesn’t need to be a permanent thing—just need it to work for a bit.”

“Yeah, yeah. Nobody wins a race if they’re not ready to make a risky turn or two so they can cross the finish line first,” Blurr flapped the rag in his hand at Swindle before he started wiping off the bar counter again. The smile on his face was tired. “And I won a _lot_ of races, back in the day.”

Swindle hopped off the chair.

“‘Back in the day?’ Talkin’ like an old-timer bot!”

“I’m downright decrepit, I’ll have you know. My luscious finish hides it. It’s a secret. Don’t tell anybody,” Blurr deadpanned.

“Tattle on you after all this fuss _and_ right when you’re gonna give my boss an interview? No way. Your secret is safe with me, old-timer,” Swindle threatically placed his hand over his chassis.

“All this fuss, it was a _fuss_ to visit you before you guys broke out,” Blurr said. He repeated himself, words starting to run into each other because he said them fast: “I put in plenty of fuss. _Because-I-was-_ worried _-about-you. And-it-would-have_ saved me some _worry_ if you’d managed to get back in touch after that, I’m just saying!”

Swindle glanced sideways. To his credit, he didn’t protest Blurr’s grumbles since they were coming from a valid place. “... Figured it wouldn’t do you any good to be caught in contact with a known fugitive. And you knew I was alive.”

“No, but last time you fell out of contact like that, I _didn’t_. I thought you’d died that time.”

Swindle didn’t have a response prepared for that. He hadn’t meant to drag up bad memories for Blurr. Actually, he did have a response, but it sounded... lame.

He went for it anyway.

“Sorry. I _was_ going to comm you as soon as I could once the enforcer searches for us had blown over, but Unicron happened.”

Blurr looked at him for a long moment. The racer huffed loudly, cheeks puffing out. Then he grabbed a second rag and chucked it at Swindle. Swindle caught it before it smacked him in the face, rebooting his big purple optics owlishly. Blurr said, “As long as you don’t make it a habit. Quit doing that.”

Twice could be written off as bad luck, but more than that and Blurr might have to draw the line.

“I wouldn’t. Cross my spark. I came back, didn’t I?” Swindle took a few steps toward a dusty table. Then he stopped and cleared his intake. “Er. I appreciated it, by the way.”

Blurr tipped his helm slightly. “Huh?”

“You comin’ to visit me in jail before we got transferred to a different prison, after the elections debate. I didn’t say it before, cuz’, well. Stuff came up. I’m saying it now.” Swindle ground it out awkwardly. “You gave a frag about me and you meant it. So, you know… Thanks.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a small scene to better explain why Blurr agreed to hire the Combaticons in my fic, but I ended up having to cut it for the sake of pacing. I decided to tidy it up and put it here as a side story. 
> 
> I wished Swindle and Blurr had gotten a chance to interact again in canon before IDW1 ended, so I like to headcanon that Blurr went to see Swindle in jail after the Combaticons were imprisoned at the end of TAAO.


End file.
